


road show

by CopperCaravan



Series: Dragon Age Prompt Fills [7]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening
Genre: Awkward Flirting, F/M, Fenera Mahariel, Pre-Relationship, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 14:59:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7319914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a fill for a tumblr prompt: Nate and Mahariel + "where the fuck did that clown come from?"<br/>I was very... loose with this prompt.<br/>Post Awakening: While trying to avoid the notice of the Order, Nate and Mahariel pass through a town in Orlais. Mahariel meets her first jester and proceeds to punch the shit out of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	road show

Orlais is even more ridiculous than Leliana had led her to believe.

The place has nothing on the dark, suffocating halls of Weisshaupt of course, but still. Things here are bright, but they are too bright. Things here are colourful and beautiful and delicate, but they are too colourful and beautiful and delicate. Mahariel feels as though she must step just so, else the whole city will crumble into the earth, frills and dresses and music and all. Or else, _she_ will crumble into the earth, be buried under the carefully curated flagstones and the Orlesians will step over her forgotten body every day as though she’d never been here at all.

She wonders if her clan has forgotten her so easily as that. She wishes the rest of the world would.

“I hate this place,” she mutters, narrowing her eyes and looking at her feet as the Orlesians bustle by. She’s not a Warden here, never mind that she can’t really ever be anything else now. Here, in this city that smells too strongly of flowers and sugar and perfume, she’s just another elf and gods, but that’s the wrong thing to be in Orlais.

Nathaniel laughs at her though, amused not so much by her discomfort as by her dismissal of _The Great Orlesian Empire_ with all its grandeur _._ “This isn’t even a big city,” he chides.

Well, it’s certainly bigger than any blasted city she’s ever been in, not that she’s ever enjoyed a single one of them. When she says so, he just laughs again. “You want to get to Jader, you’ll have to grit your teeth and bear it.”

“Jader was your idea,” she corrects, still careful to keep her voice down.

“It’s a good one too,” he says, and she pretends not to notice when his hand brushes hers. “Trust me,” he says. “You’ll like Jader.”

“Not if it’s anything like this,” she tosses back.

“You’re going to hate Val Royeaux.”

This time she’s the one who laughs. “You say that like I plan on visiting.”

“We both know how reliable your plans are. The more you don’t want to go, the more likely we’ll end up there.”

She doesn’t bother pretending she didn’t notice that— _we._ Hell, she couldn’t get rid of Nathaniel Howe even if she wanted to. Funny to think how short a time ago it was that she wanted exactly that.

She rolls her eyes and lets her gaze wander over the road in front of them, willing the inn to be closer so she can just hurry up and hide there, grab a drink and curl up in a bed for the night and pretend she isn’t here. “Well, if we ever go, you can—what _the fuck_ is that?”

Looking up was a mistake. Looking up, baring her face and every delicate line of her vallaslin to the street of this city, was an awful—and foolish—mistake. The crowd takes no note of her at first—of course they don’t—but _one_ man does.

His clothes are outrageous, even for Orlais—gaudy and wildly patterned. He waltzes up to her as though he is actually waltzing (a dance Mahariel only knows thanks to Leliana’s whims), but what makes her shuffle backward, curl her arms around her waist in defence, is the mask. White and trimmed in dangling bells and exaggerated around the eyes—it’s grotesque.

He reaches out and grabs her wrist, presses her hand to his cheek as though to kiss her, and says to Nathaniel, “What a pretty little savage you have here, sir. Have you taught her to dance? I could use a new partner.”

A few of the passers-by stop and chuckle, the women hiding their chittering voices behind their fans and the men not bothering to cover their mouths at all. Shemlen teeth have rarely seemed so menacing.

She tries to jerk her hand away, but the man’s grip is too tight. “How spirited, sir. Perhaps she can lead!” He yanks her toward him and his fingers are so tight around her wrists, she can’t pull away. When he begins to spin her in a clumsy circle, and their audience begins laughing in earnest, she panics.

“That’s enough,” she hears Nathaniel say somewhere behind her. But clearly it isn’t because the man in the terrible mask still will not let her go.

She plants one foot as firmly as she can and when he stumbles, she jerks her hands away and he almost falls. He’s hardly had time to right himself before Mahariel pulls back and punches him square in the nose with a satisfying crack. His stupid mask has broken.

There are shrieks and gasps from the gathering crowd and as Mahariel watches the blood drip down the chin of her assailant, she remembers: she’s not a Warden here, only an elf.

\---

Several hours and interrogations later, she’s scowling while Nathaniel washes blood off her knuckles in a back room of the inn.

“Thanks for not letting them arrest me,” she offers, albeit a bit begrudgingly.

He grins, but keeps his eyes on her hand. “You could’ve made it easier by not hitting him in the face.”

She shrugs. “I’ve never seen a jester before; how was I supposed to know?”

He laughs and begins wrapping her hand in a bandage. She thinks it’s excessive—all this for a few scrapes—but she doesn’t protest until he presses a bit too hard. Then she can’t help the little squeak of dismay, embarrassing as it is. “Sorry,” he says quickly. “I suppose you’re right though; hard enough to tell the fools from the foolish in Orlais.”

After several moments of silence, Nathaniel says “I should’ve hit him too.” And Mahariel realizes he’s still holding her hand, cleaned and bandaged and in need of nothing else.

She shrugs and looks toward the window. “I had it handled.” _Not quite, but well enough._

“I know. I just didn’t like him. More of a jackass than a jester.”

She stays quiet for a while wondering how he knows anything about Orlais at all; certainly Rendon hadn’t become the right hand of Loghain Mac Tir by sending his children to the Orlesian Court on holidays. She doesn’t move her hand.

_What a pretty little savage you have here, sir._

She’d rather be home with the rest of her _savage_ clan than here in Orlais hearing about it from some racist village fool. She knows it isn’t an option—she does—but still. Homesickness isn’t easily cured, by logic least of all things. Shems have such greedy hands.

She almost reaches toward her ear with her free hand, toward the phantom ache in the missing tip, but she doesn’t. _Nothing there, nothing there, nothing there._ But she does ball her hands into fists, press her nails into her palms.

“I’ll go get us something to eat,” Nathaniel says, and she feels him brush a fingertip over her bandaged knuckles. She doesn’t pretend she doesn’t notice. His hands aren’t greedy, but they are so, so different.

“I just need some time,” she whispers. She’s only half-certain she knows what she’s saying and she’s wholly terrified by it.

He laughs at her from the doorway and she doesn’t turn around but she knows the look on his face well enough that she doesn’t need to. “Well, we’ve got nothing _but_ time these days.”


End file.
